Do you have what it takes to be a Fight Night warrior? Fight Night is back - for our 11th year - on 24 May 2018. 20 fearless channel contenders will once again immerse themselves into the brutal world of boxing to raise money for their chosen charities.

What opportunities will the enlarged company offer partners, and what can they expect from the vendor in the second half of 2018? All will be revealed in this web seminar, which will see Datto SVP Mark Banfield lay out the vendor’s plans and discuss the investments it is making in its UK business.

Many businesses are moving to the cloud. In fact, 12% of SMBs have already made the move, and by 2020, 50% of SMBs will have moved all of their business systems to the cloud. Take advantage of this huge market opportunity by becoming a cloud service provider for your existing business.

To grow, to remain relevant to the customers, and to remain profitable, IT channels (in all their forms) will have to master a number of business model transformations in the cloud and digital transformation era. Read more to learn about the key transformations that IT channels will need to address, in order to bring new capabilities to customers and be successful in the future.

Details have not yet been officially provided, although some Certified partners understand the flat-rate rebate on some product sets is being slashed from this quarter.

One had been informed that their quarterly target for enterprise product sales will remain at $100,000 (£62,000) but the rebate for hitting this will drop from five to two per cent.

Under the previous system, partners could earn an extra two per cent "stretch" rebate for topping enterprise sales made in the year-ago quarter by 60 per cent. Under the new system, they can earn an extra one, three or five per cent for exceeding last year's number by 15, 30 or 45 per cent respectively, according to the partner. This means the total rebate available is still seven per cent.

"We had a very good year with Dell last year so the new growth targets will be a challenge," said the partner, who wished to remain anonymous.

"As a Dell partner that was successful last year it feels like it will be tougher for us and easier for those that weren't so successful."

Emmanuel Mouquet, general manager PartnerDirect EMEA, confirmed that changes were being made.

"Over the course of three years in the channel, we have regularly changed our quarterly rebate structure, based on partners' feedback and joint business imperatives," he said. "The new rebate structure is rewarding partners that continue to grow their infrastructure business with Dell.

"Our rebate philosophy is value and performance based, and we do expect partners to earn more while other partners will earn less quarter after quarter," he added.

"Overall, our rebate budget remains constant as a percentage of our partner business, and we are committed to delivering the best value for our Solution partners."